For the second year in a row, the Philippines recorded the most number of internet-borne threats in Southeast Asia, according to the data gathered by Kaspersky Security Network (KSN) for the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2019. The almost 4 million web threats placed the country in seventh place worldwide, climbing six notches for the same period in 2018.

The KSN is a complex distributed infrastructure dedicated to intelligently process cybersecurity-related data streams from millions of voluntary Kaspersky users around the world. From its Q4 report, a total of 3,906,410 web threats were found in the computers of Kaspersky users in the Philippines which is 31.6% overall.

Nepal tops the global list with 37.7% of users attacked by local threats. Algeria, Albania, Belarus, and the Republic of Moldova complete the top 5. The Philippines is just behind Tunisia.

Have you read “Kaspersky SEA: Enterprise solutions segment grows twofold in 2019”?

“Being one of the world’s top Internet users, I think there’s no stopping the Filipinos from utilizing the web as a part of their modern way of life,” said Mary Grace Sotayco, Territory Manager for the Philippines at Kaspersky.

“We’re hoping that as they completely embrace this technology, so too will their practice of cyber hygiene as long as they go online.”

– Mary Grace Sotayco, Territory Manager for the Philippines at Kaspersky.

Local threat

The report also showed fewer local threat incidents among Kaspersky users in the country. These are malware attacks on computers from removable media such as USBs, CDs, DVDs, and other “offline” methods. The Philippines is currently at 64th place globally with only 8,998,044 detections in Q4 of 2019 which is a significant drop from its 74th place with 11,757,863 detections in Q4 of 2018.

Threat sources also went down to 76,900 incidents in Q4 last year from 453,788 incidents in the same period in 2018. Threat sources are locations of detected malware shared from servers hosted in the Philippines.

“The significant drop in local threat infections tells us that there’s good news here. Filipinos are slowly understanding the risks, which the numbers reflect. We recognize the challenges which are almost similar across the region. Shifting the mindset is a collective effort and we’ll continue doing our part in sharing our threat intelligence and expertise to the public and to our partners in the government and private sectors,” said Yeo Siang Tiong, General Manager for Southeast Asia at Kaspersky.